


With The Windows Down

by ehmazing



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Spoilers, Vignettes, possible but unprovable brain damage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 02:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS FOR PORTAL 2. She says oh, how she missed the sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With The Windows Down

They find her on the side of the road, mud caked to her knees and soaking wet. Yet she insists they drive with the windows down as the wind whips rain droplets into the car and aginst her face, red-cheeked and baggy-eyed and smiling, smiling, smiling.

-

She won't let anyone take the box.

It weighs a good hundred pounds, has to be hefted by two people in order to get it through the doorway. They try to talk her into putting it in storage--in a closet, even--to get it out of the way, but though her voice is hoarse her tone is laced with finality. 

The box stays.

-

She stares at walls often, calculating and compiling and computing. She stares at floors and ceilings and windows, eyes sweeping the corners and the crannies as if some secret door will open right under her nose if she searches long enough.

Sometimes, she will lift a hand and slowly, cautiously flatten her palm against the wall. It always seems to surprise her that her surroundings are solid.

-

The doctor sets her ankle with concerned wrinkles folding in the corners of his mouth. The tests for brain damage were inconclusive.

"Tell me again, why did you jump from a third-story window?"

She shrugs, wincing as she wiggles her toes, muttering something about not wearing boots.

-

Most nights they find her standing in the middle of the room, hands curled into fists as she paces around the box. She stays awake until exhaustion overrides everything else, slumping against the wall, head perched on one shoulder.

On the nights she does sleep, it's only a matter of hours before they hear bangs and slams as she throws open every door and every window, shaking and sobbing that in her dreams there was no exit, there was no exit and she was trapped, a mouse in a maze full of dead ends.

-

Someone brings in a cake: 3/4 eaten. She studies her piece carefully, looking at everyone warily, and slowly, slowly, takes a bite. And then she begins to cry, shoveling cake in her mouth and licking frosting from her fingers and getting crumbs everywhere when she drops her fork. But she eats it all, even swipes her fingers through the frosting on the plate, and shyly asks for another.

-

They take her to watch the meteor shower in the summer and she lies with her hands folded over her stomach, taking deep, quiet breaths. She whispers "sorry" but refuses to explain the apology, and instead reaches with one hand to trace the half-circle of moon and talks about lunar phases, about waxing Gibbouses and waning crescents and did you know that moon dust is white like pearls, like clean wallpaper? She laughs and says that wallpaper doesn't glow like the moon does, though. 

She says oh, how she missed the sky.

-

She still refuses to eat potatoes.


End file.
